Latest / Talking Michigan Transportation / Three years later, is the hands-free law reducing Michigan crashes?

Transcript

Three years later, is the hands-free law reducing Michigan crashes? · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Hello, welcome to the Talking Mr.
• 0:09
  Jeff Cranson: Transportation Podcast.
• 0:10
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:15
  Jeff Cranson: This week I'm looking again at distractive driving and what the hands-free law adopted in Michigan in 2023 has really meant in terms of changing behavior.
• 0:26
  Jeff Cranson: A recent survey from State Farm found that distracted driving is still a top roadway safety concern among U.S.
• 0:34
  Jeff Cranson: licensed drivers ages 18 to 75.
• 0:37
  Jeff Cranson: They also found that roughly 70% of drivers agree that hands-free laws would help reduce driver distraction.
• 0:43
  Jeff Cranson: So I spoke with Ryan McMahon of Cambridge Mobile Telematics, Massachusetts firm that tracks data from drivers participating voluntarily with their insurance carriers to analyze statistics and behavior.
• 0:57
  Jeff Cranson: He's been on the podcast before to talk about this issue, and he's got some new findings on where things stand three years into this in Michigan and what he's hearing and finding out in other states.
• 1:09
  Jeff Cranson: So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
• 1:12
  Jeff Cranson: So, Ryan, it's been a while.
• 1:15
  Jeff Cranson: Could you remind people what Cambridge Mobile Telematics does and why?
• 1:20
  Jeff Cranson: Sure.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, Jeff.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for inviting me again.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Cambridge Mobile Telematics is a technology company that was born from research at MIT.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I know we're going to talk a lot about distracted driving today, but the first use case of CMT technology was just to see if you can measure from lower cost sensors that are distributed across a large geography.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can you measure interesting things?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: The first use case was using the accelerometers in the old feature phones that we carried way before smartphones, before Blackberries, in an era that is long, long ago.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: But the first use case was actually taking phones like Motorola razors, putting them in the back of taxi cabs and detecting potholes around the city of Austin.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: The first use case was called pothole patrol.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And over time, what happened is the ability to understand information from these sensors has evolved to the ability to identify and understand risky events.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then that bridged over into the insurance landscape where insurers were at that time investing in OBD2 plug-in devices.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: They're plugging into cars and they were getting some rudimentary data from the vehicles, um, from the vehicles systems directly, the electrical systems directly.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that data was then gathered and brought back to the insurance company to identify what was causing crashes.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge with that is um that it required a lot of infrastructure to be able to do that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And plugging things into the car wasn't necessarily um the cheapest way to do it because they were also having to store the data on the device itself.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: CMT's technology came in, and then with that was the bridge of actually seeing the insurance claims process itself.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: So CMT took the initial research and then adapted that to identify and understanding what behaviors cause crashes.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's looking at things like the accelerometer and a smartphone, the gyroscope, the magnetometer, the barometer, the GPS, all that information comes together.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then we are able to create events.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: These events are things like a speeding event, uh a hard breaking event, a hybrid acceleration event, and multiple forms of distraction.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Those events are then shown back to drivers so that they can see and understand what those actually are, so they connect the feeling to the actual measurement.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's delivered all through smartphone apps, and over 55 million people use CMT's technology.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all opt-in, so 100% opt-in.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: But the use case that went from pothole patrol to insurance now covers a number of different mobility uh providers, including um delivery and in the gig space as well.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: So um the technology is well distributed.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: We have a really um really keen eye towards the behaviors that are controllable by humans that lead to crashes, and ultimately the work is to reduce those crashes.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: The mission is to make the world's roads and drivers safer.
• 4:38
  Jeff Cranson: So if you told me before about how this evolved from the pothole patrol, I had forgotten that.
• 4:42
  Jeff Cranson: That's really fascinating.
• 4:44
  Jeff Cranson: Um, you just listed a whole bunch of things in a phone that I'll bet most people didn't even know were there.
• 4:49
  Jeff Cranson: Um, is an accelerometer uh something that's long been part of a smartphone, or is that a relatively new thing?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's been in it from almost the beginning.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um the accelerometer was the first, one of the first um sensors that we were using to measure.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the pothole detection was.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Over time, things like a barometer is new.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the barometer, um, of course, people are you know familiar with barometric pressure and an incoming storm, but it's actually a very basic use case.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: If anybody has an iPhone um or an Android, and you go in and you look at how many um flights of stairs you've gone up in a day.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: The reason that the phone knows that you've gone upstairs is in part because of the barometer, the barometric pressure changes, um, very small amounts.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: We use it to detect crashes, and we are able to detect if an airbag is deployed because the overpressure from an airbag is so significant.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it's um a lot of technology goes into these small devices.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason that uh that this is an interesting approach is it's so well distributed.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: Unlike the technology that goes into cars that takes years to develop and takes time to get into the hands of um the new models and then and then so on and so forth, a new smartphone um or a new um new feature that's launched via software can be in the hands of tens of millions of people within um within a few days.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that that change is really what has helped CMT become more of a read on the risk of the road because we have so many people that are carrying these um devices, and then they put technology on their phone that allows them to see their risk, that allows them to benefit from their safe driving.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Most of these programs uh fundamentally pay drivers to drive safer from the insurance industry or from Uber or others, they pay drivers to drive safer.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: But because of that level of distribution, we can aggregate and view and you know effectively be the barometric pressure for the risk of the road.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: We can tell you, you know, what things are trending and how those events um contribute to overall risk.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, um the folks that are at MDOT and the folks that are at local agencies have a have a much better capability to implement the strategies that reduce safety, but we can we can show effectively are the roads getting safer or riskier and can help um articulate the impact of some of these strategies that have taken place over the years.
• 7:29
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, there's nothing that incentivizes we humans like uh financial impact, right?
• 7:34
  Jeff Cranson: That's why I always think that some of the most effective PSAs that are done to target young people and the effects of drunk driving don't focus so much on the death and destruction, but they focus on how much it will cost you.
• 7:46
  Jeff Cranson: And that seems to make a dent with people.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think um the the challenge with driving, and and this is a this is a you know certainly long-running um psychological um conversation, but a lot of these risk events people do every day.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: They may not be caught doing them, but individuals that are that are driving aggressively, that are driving at excessive rates of speed, that are driving distracted, they may have done those multiple times, but um the conditions were just shy of the reason of getting into a crash.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge with driving is we do it so much that those conditions um need to be perfect in order for somebody to drive at an extremely high rate of speed, distracted, impaired, and others to not get into crash because we share the road with other vehicles.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: The roads are not designed for that for that level of um of that level of behavior.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: We share the road with uh bicyclists and pedestrians.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: So the real key is if you can identify these risk events and help people understand them, then it contextualizes this a little bit more than unfortunately the the last phase of the risk chain, which is a serious injury or fatal crash.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it happens, happens every single day.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: It happens to far too many people that were just going about their daily life.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And they may have been doing the same thing that they were doing the day before that and when they got into that crash.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: But what we know is that the these behaviors are absolutely, absolutely causative of crashes, and the level of um of physics, the actual force that's imparted on the car and the person is directly proportional to um to these activities and ultimately to the outcome.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: More speed equals more risk, and unfortunately, that's the place where um crashes turn into fatals.
• 9:41
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:42
  Jeff Cranson: Well, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you most recently was because the the NHSA stats were out in April and found um most states like Michigan, the numbers trending in the right direction, and uh maybe it's setting the barlow to say that we're getting back to pre-pandemic levels in terms of crashes and deaths, but still, I guess uh we'll take the good news where we can get it.
• 10:05
  Jeff Cranson: Um, and I thought maybe some of that would be tied to uh what you would call progress uh in terms of these hands-free laws, but you told me uh that's not necessarily the case.
• 10:16
  Jeff Cranson: So talk about that a little bit.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think what is I'll start with the good story first.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: The hands-free law that went into effect in 2023 in Michigan, it had one of the fastest drops in distracted driving prevalence um than we have seen in in any other state.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was almost, you know, I'm not gonna say overnight, but within a month, we saw a significant drop, a 12% drop within the first 30 days.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a that's a big change in in prevalence.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge that comes from that um from that initial drop is sustaining it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And what Michigan has done through 2023 and through um 2024 and 2025 is sustain that relative initial drop um since before the law went into effect.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is that the behavior is slightly creeping back in.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And in 2025, uh, you know, slight rise, but here already in 2026, every month um has had more distraction than the month prior to it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: So February more than January, March uh more than February, and in April more than March.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the challenge that comes when you have a hands-free law that goes into effect is you've got a tremendous amount of media that is talking about the change in law.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: That that earned media is incredibly valuable because it when we can see it, we can see the the actual engagement.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Just because a law passes, it does not mean that people are aware of it, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: That laws pass every day.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Some are highly esoteric and people have no knowledge of it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: When the um when the media reports on these law changes, that is when the behavior change um goes into high gear.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And in Michigan, it was one of the highest that we've seen.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: One of the lowest, just by contrast, was Massachusetts.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: It went into effect right around February or March 2020.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if you recall back to that period of time, the media had other things on their mind.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: There were many different conversations happening in February and March 2020.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: So almost no initial drop in Massachusetts, and Michigan has a significant one.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is how do you create the uh ecosystem that continues to feed on that and doesn't get back those gains?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because we know that these crashes are um are or these behaviors are directly related to serious injury and fatal crashes.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: The the reason that we know this is just a minute prior to a crash occurring and we detect crashes through our technology, again, mentioning the barometer from before, it's not the only way that we look at it, a lot of data that goes into this.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: But about 34% of the crashes that the last time that we analyzed this, a minute prior to the crash, they were interacting with their smartphone.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: They had their small smartphone in their hand.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: So if we know that that behavior is contributing, if we know that that behavior can be changed through um through awareness, the challenge is how do you build that awareness that that sustains over time?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And in Michigan, you've done that, I think overall, but it's starting to creep back in.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the challenge is one that does not end.
• 13:42
  Jeff Cranson: Stick around, there's more to come.
• 13:44
  Jeff Cranson: Right after this short message.
• 13:47
  MDOT Message: In Michigan, safety comes first on the roads.
• 13:50
  MDOT Message: To combat distracted driving, Michigan passed the hands-free law.
• 13:54
  MDOT Message: The law makes holding or manually using a cell phone or other mobile electronic device while operating a vehicle a primary offense.
• 14:02
  MDOT Message: This means an officer can stop and ticket you for violating the law.
• 14:06
  MDOT Message: This can include, but not limited to, sending or receiving a call, sending, receiving, or reading a text or email, accessing, reading, or posting to social media sites, or entering locations into the phone GPS.
• 14:20
  MDOT Message: With this law in place, drivers are encouraged to stay focused, keeping their hands on the wheel and their attention on the road.
• 14:27
  MDOT Message: Drive smart, drive safe, drive hands-free.
• 14:30
  MDOT Message: Michigan's hands-free law.
• 14:32
  MDOT Message: Making the road safer for everyone.
• 14:37
  Jeff Cranson: You had mentioned to me off-air uh what the least distracted place is in Michigan.
• 14:43
  Jeff Cranson: This should be intuitive to any of us who live in Michigan, but uh but what is that?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: That is by far and away Mackinac Island, uh, least distracted place to be uh to be in in the state of Michigan.
• 14:56
  Jeff Cranson: So I guess I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the distracted driving law only applies to motor vehicles.
• 15:03
  Jeff Cranson: So if you're commanding a team of horses, it probably doesn't matter.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, good question.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know the answer to that.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I would just as a PSA um suggest that if you are commanding a team of horses, probably good to have both hands on the reins there.
• 15:18
  Jeff Cranson: Yes, I think so too.
• 15:20
  Jeff Cranson: I wonder if when you talk about the months, you know, going from January to February to March, um, Michigan had a particularly brutal winter.
• 15:28
  Jeff Cranson: And I wonder if that factors in that when people are driving in poor weather, if they do pay more attention and maybe are more likely to put down their phone, and as the weather gets better, they become uh less careful about that.
• 15:39
  Jeff Cranson: Um, that's probably not something you know for sure, but that's just one theory.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: I also wonder There was a study that we did a long time ago, and I and I can't recall it, but we looked at increases of distraction during severe weather events.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I I can't remember specifically, so I don't want to cite the the sources, but we were able to look at it on a on a localized level and get a sense.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think that it actually went up in some cases, which was pretty surprising because I think that people were trying to identify um more information about the road conditions so they were interacting with the phone more.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know this, of course.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know, we're only looking at the sensors, we're not looking at any of the content.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have access to the content.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, these are great things to study and look at, but um, but in general, the more that that somebody is, you know, paying attention to their smartphone, the more hazard that is, that is, of course.
• 16:34
  Jeff Cranson: Everybody's got a weather app, everybody's got the radar at their at their fingertips, so that that kind of makes sense.
• 16:40
  Jeff Cranson: I yeah, I don't know.
• 16:41
  Jeff Cranson: I think it'd be interesting to find out what states think that they've been effective at keeping the drum beat going so that that message is is sustained, because I think you're right about when it was when it was passed in 2023 and the governor signed it here, there was a lot of media, there was a lot of media interest, and um that's probably weighing some.
• 17:00
  Jeff Cranson: So hopefully uh people doing what you do.
• 17:04
  Jeff Cranson: Uh Michigan State University uh released a study last year looking at this, uh, just different ways to keep that alive seems really important.
• 17:13
  Jeff Cranson: One thing I'm curious about because in in Michigan, um, you showed Wayne County was tops um for this as an issue, and that's to be expected, it's the most populous county, and you think the most densely populated.
• 17:27
  Jeff Cranson: But then right there on that list was Cass County, which is uh a rural, not at all densely populated county in southwest Michigan.
• 17:37
  Jeff Cranson: Do you think do demographics factor into this at all in terms of uh people in poorer communities are likely to drive older vehicles not equipped with Bluetooth technology?
• 17:46
  Jeff Cranson: Is that still, I guess I don't even know how prolific Bluetooth technology is now on our vehicles.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: We don't see that.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: We see uh essentially the same distribution of risky driving events that come from um really every income strata.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a an interesting study that was done by Stanford University that looked at speeding, for example, and they found that speeding was roughly evenly distributed throughout communities and you know, looking at various demographics.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't think it's as much of an economic component because for every person that may not have Bluetooth in their car on the lower end of the income strata is somebody on the higher end of the income strata that can't put their phone away because there's a the next business deal that comes through.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the it's sort of the the great um equalizer is the the engagement with smartphones.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's it's equally distributed and equally distributed across um rural and and populous counties.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: The one thing that we do see from time to time is that states that border uh or counties that are um on borders with um states that don't have hands-free laws, we do occasionally see that the trips that are in those counties, that the risk events that occur there um look more like the um like the border on the other side.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um that said, I'm pretty sure that Indiana has a hands-free law, but I I may be wrong on that.
• 19:18
  Jeff Cranson: I'll look that up and include it in the the show notes, but uh Ohio certainly does.
• 19:23
  Jeff Cranson: Um so in terms of our our border states and where the traffic goes back and forth.
• 19:28
  Jeff Cranson: But that's interesting.
• 19:28
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, that makes sense, right?
• 19:30
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, you see that all elsewhere in the country, that people wouldn't be able to do that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Ohio's a good example, actually.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: If we if we go down to Ohio and we were to look at Ohio, well, let me let me back up for for a second.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: You you said you know the something about how do you sustain the the conversation on on these issues.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that so number one, um I think that the role of communications is far undervalued in the world of DOTs, not just because you and I are having this conversation now, but because we see it in the data.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: It it there's no other reason that you would see a drop occur when these laws are passed.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's the it's the partnership to earn media.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: What Ohio did, which was actually pretty interesting, is they published a number of press releases along the way that showed changes in behavior at various milestone events.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh the governor's office actually included it in the state of the state when um they were talking about their overall initiatives on road safety.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that the the ability to constantly have information and communicate that information helps facilitate the reason to be newsworthy, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you're having a conversation about risk, you're presenting information that shows that risk, where it's trending, how it's impacting.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can devote resources to help uh facilitate those conversations.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: In the case of Ohio, they also um, by the way, changed their um their overall media buying.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: So going from earned media to paid media, their paid media campaigns actually started to focus on the counties that had uh the higher levels of prevalence, and it changed over time.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of doing a statewide campaign, they started targeting it to counties with um education and um media buys.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: But even in Ohio, that has had uh they published this past year four years of declining fatalities and very good progress on distraction.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: The uh consistently, their highest, their highest levels of distraction are rate around Cincinnati and um some other border counties where you have that challenge of drivers that don't see that.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: They don't listen to the same um news programs that the folks are that live um and work in the state.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just um, you know, one strategy.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: It it takes really a holistic approach.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: And um the results are interesting, but the the one thing that we can See definitively is this role of communications.
• 22:04
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I think uh whether it's like you say, paid media or whether it's just signs, it's uh anything that gets people talking about it and and and serves as a constant reminder.
• 22:15
  Jeff Cranson: And I should point out, uh, in fairness to our friends in Indiana, that they actually passed theirs on July 1st of 2020.
• 22:23
  Jeff Cranson: So Wow Okay, there we go.
• 22:25
  Jeff Cranson: Three years before Michigan.
• 22:27
  Jeff Cranson: So, you know, what else are you are you looking at, Ryan?
• 22:30
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, uh this uh your work has to be satisfying when you start seeing the numbers go in the right direction, but you know it's not always a straight line.
• 22:39
  Jeff Cranson: So, you know, how do you kind of process that?
• 22:42
  Jeff Cranson: Um, knowing that that I guess um there's always going to be work to be done on this front, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think that there's a pathway that um has been really uh rewarding.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: When we first started to publish this information, it was right before the the um the rise of COVID.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then in COVID, the numbers went off the charts.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: We saw them go off the charts in terms of speeding and distraction um almost immediately in around the March timeframe.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right around that timeframe, by the way, a lot of people were looking at the insurance industry and they were saying, hey, we should look at um at what what the current rates are and we should have refunds for drivers because people are not going to be getting in as many crashes.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: What happened around that same time is we saw that the people that were still driving were driving at higher speeds and higher distraction.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: That led to, unfortunately, years of that behavior and elevated uh fatalities as well.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: We started to see declines overall in the country right around the same time that Michigan passed their law.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: A number of states have passed hands-free laws in the last few years.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the more recent the laws passed, typically the bigger the impact.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been pretty diverse.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, every you know, states uh from uh Colorado to Pennsylvania to Michigan and Alabama have had um recent legislative uh activity on hands-free.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is though, once those laws are passed and once the the initial exuberance over the communications moves through, how do you continue to make sure that happens?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really where the next phase of the work that we're doing now is undertaking.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're looking much more granularly at, in particular, you know, the types of interventions that work and the actual media campaigns themselves.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: We can start to see on a county by county level, if you were to launch an education campaign, put new signage in place, create a safety corridor, we can start to see the impacts on those corridors, on those components.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: And now that means that the interventions that we put forward on the next phase or the next uh wave will be informed not only by uh the great work that's happened in the past, but we'll be informed on the, you know, on the daily and weekly level.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Super important, we started publishing this relative to work zones.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the biggest risk that occurs in work zones is drivers that are not looking in front of them.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then if you combine seed to that, that is by far the highest level of risk for people whose livelihood depends on spending time uh working uh in and around the world at the roads.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: So the more that we can start to identify these high-risk areas, identify the countermeasures that are used, evaluate the effectiveness of those countermeasures, and then change in response to the actual information, how the risk is of being observed, that allows us to then overall help educate our partners and DOTs around the country on strategies that can effectively not only make the road safer for the people inside the car, but everybody that's in and around it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's moving from a much more macro level to a to a smaller uh kind of work zone by work zone and school by school level.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're really excited as well.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're doing work with the Safe Routes Partnership and Safe Routes to Schools.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: So that's another place that we're spending a lot of time understanding and identifying the risks for kids that are walking and biking and sharing roads on the way to school.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it's becoming much more specific to look at risks that are able to be addressed.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the more that we have partners that have um really that that resource and that capability to change signage, to change infrastructure, put temporary lanes up, uh reconfigure uh work zone to better understand when drivers actually are um are able to be influenced.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the challenge of a sign on an upcoming work zone is only as good as the person that is looking at the road.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have more capabilities to see what that actually is on um on our highways and local roads on a day-to-day basis.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: And from that work together, we can we can prevent crashes.
• 27:23
  Jeff Cranson: I really like the safety corridor concept.
• 27:26
  Jeff Cranson: Um, so I have to ask you, as somebody who uh uh deals with this all the time and is obviously very passionate about it, how do you react when you're on the road and you uh see somebody next to you in traffic who's um holding the phone in their hand?
• 27:40
  Jeff Cranson: Do you uh do you give them a look?
• 27:42
  Jeff Cranson: Do you shake your head?
• 27:43
  Jeff Cranson: Uh or do you just look away?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: I um I see it too often.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: I live in a state that doesn't have a hands-free law, so I I see it far too often.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that there's there's a communications challenge because I've talked to people um here and and the the conversations are a little surprising.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Where I um, you know, the the response from some individuals is well, why should I have to be subject to the same rules that truckers are in commercial motor vehicles?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think that it's those moments that have taught me that that we can't stop having these conversations.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: What is the actual impact of using a smartphone while you're driving?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: What is the level of risk elevation from these um incidents?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the the challenges that the official data sources that are tabulated that ultimately lead to the um the FARS database, which is an incredible amount of work.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And the people at the National Center for Statistics and Analysis do amazing, an amazing job tabulating and understanding and identifying all of these vectors that lead to crashes.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is that that is all originating from police report data.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And distraction is one of those things that is really hard to identify without some sort of a primary source.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: And from that, if you look at the contribution to crashes, it's far understated.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: That has bearing on state legislatures, that has bearing on the public's awareness of these things, versus impairment is very easy to document from a from an alcohol perspective, incredibly easy at this point because it's it's well known.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: The tests are there.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: So in almost every fatal crash that it's suspected, it can be discovered.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that same level of awareness to the issues that are prevalent on the road is not the same.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So people treat it that way.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it is effectively like today, driving around and um drinking a margarita behind the wheel.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the the the level of um comfort that somebody would have doing that openly in and around law enforcement and around other drivers uh is substantially different.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're drinking a beer, let's say 50 years ago behind the wheel, substantially different.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: I would say that that that has been one of the major road safety accomplishments of just changing the public perspective.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: That same level of awareness and the same level of public engagement has not happened in distraction.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we still have a lot of work to do.
• 30:28
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, you might have just come up with a good idea for uh PSA.
• 30:32
  Jeff Cranson: You should uh throw that out there.
• 30:33
  Jeff Cranson: That idea of, you know, making a person think about holding the phone in their hand is the same as holding a margarita.
• 30:39
  Jeff Cranson: I think that's an interesting perspective.
• 30:41
  Jeff Cranson: And I think you're you're absolutely right about this being underreported.
• 30:44
  Jeff Cranson: I remember when Governor Whitmer signed the law in Michigan in 2023, the federal government had reported, I think, something like 3,000 lives lost due to distracted driving in 2022.
• 30:56
  Jeff Cranson: I thought that number had to be low.
• 30:58
  Jeff Cranson: If we're talking, you know, 50,000 people killed on the roadways each year, I gotta believe more than 3,000 of them are because of distracted driving.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that that is the good news on that front is we are working more actively with research partners like the Insurance and Super Highway Safety, publishing research on this topic, engaging um actively with um with the folks that that have this work.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, in the the roadway safety strategy that NHTSA just put out a couple of um a couple of weeks ago, this was specifically called out.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I do think that there is absolutely the pathway to improving these issues.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: It just is gonna take um it's gonna take a lot of effort.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the number one thing.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, passing a law and the work that happens in the legislature is incredibly difficult.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, it's the starting point.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: So then then the baton is handed to um to a lot of different people to then continue it, but it's just the starting point.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And in some cases, and in some states, we're not even at the starting point.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: The most distracted state in the country consistently is um flip-flops between Mississippi and Louisiana.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no hands-free law in either one of those states.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not surprising to see the prevalence, you know, in some cases, 500, 600% more than a trip in Michigan.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: So these are the kind of things that um that do have bearing.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: The the laws do make a difference.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: We do see a reduction.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: I do um believe that this overall macro reduction in detraction has led directly to a reduction in the total number of people killed on the roads.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: So every person that that has a role in passing these laws and then executing them is absolutely saving lives.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is, you know, in Michigan's case, a 12% drop occurs.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get another 12%?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of work to pass a law.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you how do you get another 12% drop?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if we want to continue to lower fatalities, now the question is what's the next part of the strategy?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the biggest gap that exists today is there's not a constant re-evaluation of the strategy because the data sources that we have are not um giving us the opportunity, you know, overall across the macro transportation uh infrastructure.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: We need to get quicker in looking at the hazards that are causing risk and then those strategies that solve that.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the only way that you can do that is to move further down the chain of risk events and not just focus.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the fatal crashes deserve incredible amounts of investigation, incredible amounts of resources.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is how do you extrapolate the information you need to the broader ecosystem, the broader roads to be able to solve those before they happen again?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: You need data sources that can help inform if your strategies are working.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if they are, double down.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And if they're not, change course.
• 34:03
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, well, I well said.
• 34:04
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, I think you're right.
• 34:06
  Jeff Cranson: It's it's it's about work, it's about concerted work and agencies coming together and and collaborating on this, but it's it's also about education, and that's that's where we come in, and that's where this comes in.
• 34:18
  Jeff Cranson: So uh as always, I really appreciate you taking time to talk about this, Ryan.
• 34:22
  Jeff Cranson: I think it's it's a fascinating topic.
• 34:24
  Jeff Cranson: It's it's obviously vital to all of us in our everyday lives.
• 34:29
  Jeff Cranson: So thank you.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, Jeff.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the work you're doing.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: As I said before, the biggest the biggest tool in the tool uh uh tool uh shed on this topic is communications.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: We see it over and over again.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: So please uh please take my my thanks for the work you're doing, and uh as always we stand ready to help.
• 34:47
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Machine Transportation.
• 34:50
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzprout.
• 34:55
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Depler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, and Jackie Salinas, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.